The Personal is Political: Developing new subjectivities through participatory action research

Participatory action research (PAR) is gaining critical attention from scholars across the social sciences, and in the field of geography more specifically, as it promises a viable alternative for researchers concerned with social justice. If most of the benefits of PAR are identified in terms of its potential as a vehicle for social change and action, PAR's role in personal change is less understood. This paper considers the development of new subjectivities in a PAR process from a post-structural perspective. My objective is to reframe and connect the social justice orientation of PAR to a feminist post-structural project which emphasizes the fluidity and multiplicity of subject positions as the basis for personal (and social) transformation. Analysis draws upon collaborative research conducted with six young women in New York City and their project Makes Me Mad: Stereotypes of young urban womyn of color. Discussion addresses the role of critical reflection, dialogue, emotion, and narrative in the participatory research process. Building upon critical educator/theorist Paolo Freire's contributions to PAR, I address issues of power, scale, and the politics of location in order to contribute to understandings of spatial praxis.     

Some rhizomatic recollections of a feminist geographer: working toward an affirmative politics

In celebration of the 21st anniversary of Gender, Place and Culture, I have taken the opportunity to argue for an affirmative politics for feminist geography. I offer a set of rhizomatic recollections of individualized moments of limit experiences that I have encountered in my own academic practice as a feminist geographer. Although perhaps not as transformative as one might expect, the limit experiences I write about are at the very least an attempt to garner attention to those experiences that transform us into academic subjects. As reflections, these recollections are an experiment in the practice of writing as part of an affirmative politics – a collective project valuing potential and possibilities. Through the writing, I assist this collective effort by many colleagues in orienting the wider projects of reflexivity, autoethnography, and autobiographical writing away from the undermining charge of being narcissistic habits borne out of the harsh criticism of not engaging the power that swirls around us toward the affirming claim of being part of a sustainable ethics whereby researchers and scholars can write from an embodied, embedded self through recounting their own intellectual and social practices.     

Milton,the passions,and the knowing body

ABSTRACT

This paper challenges the notion that Galenic humouralism stripped the early modern body of agency and argues that some accounts of early modern materialism were connected to epistemology. It evidences how Milton’s passions are inscribed with the shocking language of agency and moral responsibility to overturn the assumption of “passive”, unconscious passions. It explores two pictures of passions in connection with knowledge: passions as obstacles to knowledge, and passions as sources as knowledge. Both images recast the material body as a knowing agent, but do so with complications. Agency-ridden passions complicate a straightforward notion of agency, and seem to leave early moderns with the option of blaming their passions instead of themselves for deception. Frequent references to internal passions in political discourses also suggests an unsettling degree of comfort with subjectivity in making knowledge-statements, but it is a version of subjectivity that seems far more public than private.     

The objective–subjective dichotomy and its use in describing probability

ABSTRACT

This article reviews the nature of the objective–subjective dichotomy, first from a general historical point of view, and then with regard to the use of these terms over time to describe theories of probability. The different (metaphysical and epistemological) meanings of ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ are analysed, and then used to show that all probability theories can be divided into three broad classes. A formal definition of (epistemological) objectivity is given and used to clarify this division.     

‘Arsenic of the size of a pea’

It is one of criminology’s (few) established truths that women commit far fewer violent crimes than men do. This has been especially evident when it comes to deadly violence. Besides witchcraft and infanticide there is, however, another serious crime that has been associated with women: poisoning. This article studies female poisoners in 19th-century Sweden. The investigation shows that poisonings were fairly common during this period, albeit far from being an exclusively female affair. The empirical findings reveal that these crimes were directed at several different categories of victims: spouses, children and elderly household members, as well as other women. It is also shown that a considerable number of the women accused of poisoning was acquitted, in many cases thanks to the strict process rules associated with the statutory theory of legal proof. Theoretically, the article hypothesizes an understanding of these poisonings where agency is placed at the centre. They are thus seen as acts where (female) subjectivity was created during this period.